Page 79 of Hunted By Fae

And all of us grip the rope so tightly that, under the protection of our winter gloves, all our knuckles must be blotchy and white with the pressure.

No one dares slip away from the rope as we hike the snowy highway to the city ahead.

At the rear of the line, I wash the gleam of my torchlight over the sign arching over the roads.

‘KELOWNA’

One of those cities that’s really more of a large town, whose population barely inched over 100,000 pre-blackout, and there’s so much land that it sprawls out into a labyrinth of snow-packed streets.

Perfect for us.

It’s the kind of place we carefully pick out on our maps and compare to the travel books we have scoured along the way.

Turns out, libraries are pretty easy to break into, and they make for good safehouses. It’s easy to burn time with a book or two while waiting on others in the group returning.

But I don’t read anything new. There are no new books in my backpack.

Something about the end, the apocalypse, the blackout, the fae, and the dangers of other people, something about all of that has me reading familiar stories.

There is safety in nostalgia.

But I can only afford to have two books at a time weighing down my backpack.

The straps still dig into my shoulders, a constant ache that, no matter how many times I shift and readjust the straps, never eases.

A bud of relief blooms in my tight chest as we pass the city sign and, ahead, the torchlights stretch over the end of the highway.

Almost there.

The breath fogs at my face, but I stare through it to the thick blackness edging into our torchlight, as if desperately trying to take over, swallow it whole, and plunge us into darkness again.

Something about the blackout in a moment like this, with strong, hefty torches blasting light into it, seems monstrous—like it’s sentient in a way, and fights to creep into the light, invade it, but can’t.

And these torches are top grade.

Not the one strapped to the barrel of my shotgun. No, this one is handheld, one for me at the back of the line, and one for Gary at the front.

We aim, and light blasts through the blackout and illuminates the tall buildings that border the road spilling out from the highway. We don’t see past the buildings on the street—but we see enough.

Mounds of snow.

That’s the city in this thick winter. Buildings, roads, trees, parks, all buried in dense snow.

Behind me, I hear the imitation of horse clopping made by a tongue smacking off the roof of a mouth.

A newer addition to our code.

Simple, it meansprepare.

So we do.

I flick my light off at the back of the line just as another at the front switches on.

Now, Carlos and Gary illuminate the way.

A hand reaches out from behind me and settles on my shoulder. It replaces the rope trapped between my palm that I let go of so I can fix the torch to my belt. That hand on my shoulder keeps me in place, with the group, not a step off-track, before I steal the rope back into my gloved grip.

The road spears through the city.